Amid a growing debate over how to bring down the government's debt, a new study has concluded that U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan has cost up to $4 trillion ($4,000,000,000,000) over the past decade.

Pentagon spending accounts for only half of the budgetary costs incurred and represents a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars, according to the study. Among other line items, the study’s contributors — more than 20 economists, political scientists and other experts — estimate federal obligations to care for past and future veterans will eventually total $600 billion to $950 billion.

Here's my favorite quote.

The $4 trillion estimate could be fodder for lawmakers increasingly concerned that the United States can ill-afford to maintain a large military presence in Afghanistan.

The study’s authors say that’s a debate worth having.

“Some people will say that’s an expensive price tag, but what we’re trying to do makes it worth it."

"Other people will say we can’t afford it,” Catherine Lutz, co-director of the “Costs of War” project, said in an interview. “That’s the debate.”

A debate worth having. Some people will say... Other people will say...

Here are some other debates worth having

Some people will say the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun. Other people will say the Earth is flat and the Sun revolves around it.

Some people will say the Earth is billions of years old. Other people will say the Earth is only some 6,000 years old and God planted those fossils in the ground to test our Faith.

Some people will say we are headed for a mass extinction in the oceans. Other people will say that Nature's Bounty is endless.

Some people will say the Earth can't possibly support all these billions of people. Other people will say God told us to be fruitful and multiply.

Some people will say humans are changing the climate in a dangerous way by burning fossil fuels. Other people will say God told us to be fruitful and multiply.

Some people will say we should learn to live in Peace & Harmony with Others who are unlike us. Other people will say we must convert the Others, or failing that, kill them.

And so on. It is in the spirit of Free & Open Debate that we celebrate our Independence Day.

The specific question on the table is whether the response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks—at least 4 trillion dollars spent, at least 225,000 people killed, countless other lives disrupted—might have been disproportionate to the event, and thus should not continue.

But there is a larger question which Thomas Jefferson addressed 235 years ago.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security—such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world...

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Great Fourth of July post, Dave. As I noted on my blog, a recent Marist poll found that nearly 70% of American adults under age 30 could not identify 1776 as the year America declared it's independence--less than half of the number of middle-aged adults who could.

The only thing you can conclude from such a dramatic increase in ignorance of such a basic fact of American history is that, as George Carlin tried to warn us, the education system is being deliberately dumbed down by the owners of this country so they can do whatever they please with little objection from the masses.

I wouldn't place too much importance on a date, Bill. The event is important, certainly, but I've never been able to remember dates.

Just about the only dates I can remember are the birth dates of me and my family, and that incident in 2001 which resulted in such a disproportionate response (which should be plastered on giant posters - were 3,000 murders good reasons to send 6,000 soldiers, and at least 219,000 others to their deaths?). Mind you, I seem to remember a poll, within the last couple of years, which found that a good proportion of Americans (maybe half?) couldn't remember the date of "9/11".

One year after the shootings at Kent State comedian Dick Gregory gave a presentation at the university. I've included a link below to the third part of the talk. It's relevant for this day, July 4th, and also for much of what Dave presents here at DOTE.

If you listen closely you'll hear a woman in the audience ask Mr. Gregory "Can't you say one good thing about america, just one thing."

I could imagine Dave catches some similar inane refrains resulting from his scathing insightful posts on how and why the beast is in decline.

Jesus said “Love your neighbour as yourself”. This was the beginning of the end of corrupt Rome and the start of fairness for the poor of the empire. The birth of the church. The spirit of Judaism for the masses so to speak, denying the letter of the law of the Pharisees, essentially corrupt self interest out of originally created laws made to allow fairness between people (instead of revenge justice). King David’s “God made Sabbath for man and not man for the Sabbath” came through Christianity to become the huge religion of today. The spirit of Judaism(rational fairness) lefts its clan, its racial origins.

Fairness is the Rowling’s Patronus/light of the soul and Jung’s shadow/Rowling’s dementor is self interest/ignorance

Jesus words deteriorated into selling indulgences for the pope’s money coffers in Rome. His ideals were corrupted by Jung’s Shadow of human interest but Martin Luther put a stop to that at Worms in Germany. He was just as enraged as Dave is. He was educated and read the Bible himself. This (people reading the Bible and writing up their opinions about that and other things) was the beginning of the European religious civil wars and nationalism ending in the “age of enlightenment” and the movement towards rationalism and human rights exemplified in “The Declaration of Independence” which so inspired the French revolutionaries. Rational fairness became irreligious and universal for all regardless of belief. Birth as (white male) human was enough.

This national holy document Dave quotes above is now just so much toilet paper to the corrupt imperial masters, so-called representatives of the people, who now so exemplify the British(German) throne of the 1770s(and the Pharisees and their Roman masters and the Catholic church of the 1500s). They are corrupt. The dementor of self interest has sucked out their soul.

This self interest is also part of the real downfall of the enlightenment which denies the natural world any right to fairness. Its basis is a blind acceptance of all people in western civilization to the bible’s first chapters giving Adam reign over nature. We must extend the “human” rights to the natural world of which our so-called economy is a subset. This is the current most pressing issue. Only balance with (fairness to) nature will save a remnant of our species. Balance is give and take. Love. Love your neighbour as you love yourself. “But who is my neighbour”. Jesus follows up with the tale of the good Samaritan( ss we all know a half breed outcast tribe of Jews unaccepted by the Pharisees and decent Jewry to whom Jesus was speaking) To an upstanding person of today you could say that a pimp/drug dealer showed he had a heart and saved his fellow man from certain death. Will we do that for nature? Only if we see our own shadow like a true criminal knows his own intimately and not like a decent citizen does not. Certainly the empire is doomed as the Masters( Citizens in Good standing without a true conscience or soul) have taken over as in Rome. The Internet is the modern equivalent of Gutenberg’s printing press which started the enlightenment rolling. The bloggers are “The Voice in the Wilderness” of John the Baptist. Can we save the world or start the Arab Spring or a new enlightenment or global religion as in times so far past? Do we have the imagination or will?